Tagged: Indiegogo

Revenge Of The Cats: Ethernet is a free experimental online multiplayer FPS with unique gameplay: Alternate between the pure energy “ether form” and the physical manifestation called “CAT”.
Capture territory and defeat enemies using a multitude of weapons, grenades, and target-seeking discs that can be deflected and steered around corners.

The IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign to resurrect the game as a proper open-source project by re-creating it with a modern cross-platform engine already raised over $1000!
Only $452 are missing right now, and with just one week left, the creator of the game would like to encourage everyone to spread the word about the campaign, so that Revenge Of The Cats: Ethernet can join the ranks of open-source GNU/Linux games.

GOL is run by one men named Liam Dawe who sadly is currently unemployed and not sadly, a young and proud father!Also a big thanks to the contributors and editors for making GOL great. About a month ago Liam Dawe started a campaign on Indiegogo to fund hosting space for GOL and have only 4 days left.

He is aiming for 600 GBP (British Pounds) and already got 170 (which is something) 600 GBP will enable him to host GOL for more than two years, and as Indiegogo is not kickstarter – Liam can choose to keep the contributions even if it’s not fully funded – so every penny counts!

Who are we?GamingOnLinux.com is one of the main Linux gaming websites that is updated daily by the editors and the community. In the past we have run competitions for people to win games, we review games, interview game developers and so on.

We also run a Wiki open to anyone to edit about mainly crowdfunding games that offer Linux support (the only one of it’s kind currently!).

What We Need & What You Get
£600 would cover just over two years worth of hosting so that rather than worrying about the bill we can worry about the website content to give you more of what you want to hear about!

This is for our own Private Server so we aren’t on a server with hundreds of other websites. It also means we can host other people’s projects without issues as well.

We are currently in the process of revamping the website as well out of our own time and pocket to make it much easier to use and less javascript heavy! So it will load faster and look better.

The Impact
By contributing you will be securing the future of GamingOnLinux.com to continue to break awesome Linux gaming news to you!

Other Ways You Can Help
If you can’t contribute don’t worry! We accept help in many other ways like spreading the word on social networking websites and even just submitting articles to us, it all helps!

As I’ve wrote before, Torque 3D was released as open source under the MIT license – however fully porting it to GNU/Linux takes time and money. For this purpose the creators of the engine – GarageGames started an IndieGoGo campaign. The goal is to FULLY port Torque3D to GNU/Linux (including the editor !) For this GarageGames intends to hire a community member full time to work on the project We have $29,487 to raise in 45 days.

Sadly I’ve seen many campaign that want to bring something for free for the whole community (instead of just for those who pledge) – fail, even trough the purpose is far greater. Please help bring Torque 3D to GNU/Linux and make it available for all. This will bring us a great and professional engine to use in our projects.

Right now, Linux has some great programming libraries for developing games, but when it comes to working as a level designer or an artist, the tools are lagging behind Windows and Mac OS X. It’s not from lack of trying. There are great developers working on tools day and night for Linux, but the going is slow. Unity announced an export option for their engine so that game developers on Mac and Windows can export to Linux. This is EXCELLENT news for Linux game players. It’s the same news as always for Linux game developers: to make games: buy a Mac or pay for Windows if you want to make games.

We started this campaign to change that message. We want Linux to be a first-class citizen for game developers. We recently open sourced Torque 3D under the MIT license, and the first deluge of questions were about Linux compatibility. The move to open source Torque was something that the founders of GarageGames wanted to do over 10 years ago, but they also needed a business model for their studio.

Torque is the engine that was originally used in the Tribes series of games, and has seen a number of advancements throughout its history. Since open sourcing it, we have had nearly 300 forks of the codebase on GitHub. You can find out more information about Torque at the GarageGames site and download it from GitHub to kick the tires. Unfortunately, it’s only for Windows right now, so you might have to flex your Wine or dual-booting muscles to try it out.

What’s In It for All of Us?

We want a dedicated Linux-native game development platform. We don’t think that Linux game developers should have to switch between machines so that they can develop on Windows and just test on Linux. We don’t think that they should have to fiddle with Wine to get the simplest of editors to work natively, only to have the whole thing crash when importing models. We want Linux to be a native platform for game developers.

Workflow for Engines without Native Support

If you use any of the popular engines out there that have Linux support, here is a workflow (assuming dual-booting).Open editor. Import models, edit level, add logic, etc. Build the game. Export to Linux. Copy the binary to a shared drive. Reboot and load Linux. Copy from the shared drive locally. Run the game. Crash. Get crash report. Copy crash report to shared drive. Reboot. Load engine and crash report. Find mistake and attempt to repair. Repeat.

This loop is a little faster if you have two computers next to each other and a shared device, but even then you’re switching gears and doing a lot of waiting. Waiting means that you have time to get coffee or check Slashdot for news, but it’s also time that you could be making your game.

Our Solution: Linux-Native Game Development

Obvious, right? Well, it should be. But it’s also an answer that takes a lot of time and money to implement. When commercial software companies look at their bottom line, the return on investment for developing software for Linux is really low (and often unknown) in the game engine development world. John Carmack noted during his keynote at QuakeCon that “Valve announcing Steam Linux support changes things a bit but we have made two forays into Linux commercial market, most recently with Quake Live client but that platform just hasn’t carried its weight compared to Mac” (45:26, QuakeCon 2012 – John Carmack Keynote). This was specifically about game targets, but the lack of commercial editor support for game development on Linux speaks volumes on how the engine industry feels about Linux.

Luckily, our platform layer has some of the core functionality needed for a Linux port. Our dedicated server has been used on Linux for a number of years with different games, and that handles much of the core engine functionality. What currently is not working on Linux is the game editor and shared client. That’s where you come in.

So, How Will the Money be Used?

Well, this is an experiment to see if crowd funding can pay for specific features that people really want in a game engine.What we are asking for is enough money, based on a number of estimates from strong Linux developers who have ported large codebases in the past, to make this port happen. The estimates were between two and three months for a single, dedicated developer. We chose three months to accommodate any found-work that can come up. As software developers, we know that once you start down a path, new work will be discovered, so we wanted to make sure to include a buffer for it.

The project will pay $45 an hour for roughly 3 months worth of work from a single developer (a team can be hired to increase productivity, but there will be a finite amount of money from the campaign to pay them). Of course, IndieGoGo will get 4% off the top for hosting the service. The payment providers (credit cards, PayPal, etc) will get roughly 3-4% depending on international fees, etc. Then, the prize tiers will be fulfilled, shirts and such bought and shipped! The remainder of the money will go towards the development team porting Torque 3D to Linux.

When Will We See Updates?

As it is developed. That’s right. Torque 3D is open source and up on Github right now. You can download it and take it to town, kick the tires, and see what it’s all about. There will also be a Linux branch live on GitHub where you can watch the developers porting the engine to Linux. You get to see the benefits immediately. You do not have to wait a long time watching for infrequent updates, hoping to see something in a year or two. You will have full access to the development branch of the Linux port to see the team’s progress, commit by commit.

But even if we do not reach our goal, and your money goes right back in your pockets, we think you’ll see a Linux port eventually. It just won’t be nearly as quick since the developers have jobs, families, bills, and they’re doing the port of a very large engine in their limited free time. Why not hire them so that the port can be their full-time job? That’s what we want to do.

Our first platform target is 32b Ubuntu, with stretch goals for other platforms to be announced.

I love Linux, but have no money! How can I help?

Tell people. Tell your friends and family, local installfests, anyone who would love to make games on Linux.

Share this project using the IndieGoGo social tools, your favorite social media platforms, or just by linking to it on forums that you frequent!

Leave comments so that we can answer your questions.

About Torque

Torque 3D is based on the 2007 Frontline award winning Torque Game Engine Advanced. It has been actively developed for over ten years, beginning its life at Dynamix for the Starseige Tribes games. After the closure of Dynamix by Sierra On-Line, some of the studio formed GarageGames with the vision of changing the way games are made and played.

About GarageGames

GarageGames is a 3D visualization middleware company dedicated to creating top-tier technology for the game and simulation industries. GarageGames has over seventy years of combined experience and a successful engine platform for the last 10 years.

This game was being worked on for one year now and the (solo) developer uses free/open source tools to create the game.

If the Indiegogo campaign will succeed the game will be released for all under the GPL and Creative Commons.

Questverse is a comedy, anime sci-fi RPG which is easy to learn and is inspired by the freedom and immersion of the original pen-and-paper RPG games. It is being developed in blender game engine by a sole person, and its planned supported platforms in priority order are GNU/Linux, Mac and windows.

Features
Questverse puts you in the role of an agent of the galactic quest agency, your task? Make a living! For that you will need to accept the most strange quests, so you can receive a well deserved reward for your generosity; but maybe things will go far beyond what you expected… Questverse includes:

– Create your character(currently just nightkin and female, solarians are planned), choosing your race(from two), looks, powers, skills and personal details.
– Easy to learn, no loads of rpg stats, the game will be more about roleplaying your character.
– Lenght limited only by the number of quest packages you have.
– No two games will be the same, randomness and non linearity.
– Learn true facts about the cosmos while playing
– Combats will require more thinking than just attacking your opponent until him or you is defeated; gameplay also will require some thought.
– Original history, characters and concept
– And more…

Besides Kickstarter there is also another platform for raising funds for the development of indie project…it’s Indiegogo !

A Russian team called FakeDrake (which I’m hope isn’t fake 😉 ) wants to develop a Zombie survival RPG game called ZombieForward built using a costume game engine which supports GNU/Linux.
The game is a sandbox-style survival RPG set in post apocalyptic zombie infested world !
The graphics will be classic Isometric Fallout style (Fallout 1-2, not 3 🙂 ) in high-definition.

LGN :What kind of graphics/music can we expect from the game ?
Do you have some screenshots or demos to show ? (concept art could look so far from the actual game).

What engine are you using (I know it’s written that you will support Linux, but…. will you 😉 ) ?

Can you add a digital perk which includes the game and a digital art-book ? (and another perk which also includes a digital music).

Apart from survival, what aspects of RPG can we find in the game, compares to Fallout1/2 for example, like : missions, NPC’s, Party, leveling, influence on the game world by your deeds and the way you solve the quests etc… ?

Thanks
Maxim.

Georgiy Romanov :Hello, Maxim. Thanks for you questions, here is you answers.
I will not give you a definite answer about NPCs, I will say one thing – they are in the game. Some of them will give the quests (this quests are optional, but without passing them you could lose a lot of fun and some interesting game moments).

RPG elements: As you can see from the description we will give players the opportunity to build their own characters. For this purpose, we’re introducing 8 groups of skills into the game. 2 of which will be main, other – secondary. This will directly affect the play style, because the main skills will allow access to the special objects and skills, not available to the other characters.

Work on the skill will be made up from the improving it and holding on the current skill level. It is pretty hard so you could not creat a real the master of all trades. That’s why we encourage players to invite their friends.
Unfortunately now we have not any screenshots due to the fact that our artist joined us recently.
About music: there will be 2 main areas of musical design: the brutal and not very brutal metal (rock) and the melodic, depressive, ambient.

About our engine: luckily, we’re writing our own one. Thats why we can take care of making it cross-platform enough.
About perks: we’re happy to say that the perks more than $20 will provide access to download digital copies of the soundtrack and art-book. We will add this feature in the nearest update.

Hello, Survivor!

What is ZombieForward? It’s a sandbox-style PC game, where player can choose what to do, where to go, etc. The game takes place in the near future, about 2050 year, in the apocalyptic world, due to epidemic, full of zombies who want to kick your ass.

There are enough problems in addition to zombies. You need to look for food, drinking water, or you will die soon, watching status warnings. To kill hordes of enemies you will need some weapon, some of which you can do by your own hands, also you will need healthy sleep and some medicine to cure illnesses.

If you want to survive you will need to use your brain and fight for your life! Other things you could find in various places, sometimes not even suitable for them!

Will you survive?

What can I do in your game?

You can choose one of 24 combined classes of survivors.

You can use a lots of amazing found/constructed weapons to fight for your life.

You can build your own Stronghold to survive in such a cruel world.

You can find/construct vehicle/motorbike/boat/etc. to explore huge, random-generate world.

You can do all of it with you best friends, in a close groups. You can travel together or separate into small groups to look after stronghold and explore world at the same time!

What I have to do in your game?

You must look for food, drink, medicines, ammo, clothes, etc to survive.

You must find safe place to survive, or make some of pther places safe!

You have to kill crowds of terrible monsters, fight with the modern deseases.

Can I manage my own character?

Yes! We have 4 iconic characters, but if you want to make your own character to play you can do it, using 8 perks, 4 body types, huge amount of beards, haircuts, etc.

This way, you can play as Soldier, Scoundrel, Medic, Engeneer, or make you own!

What kind of graphics do you use?

This game will be mostly like a Fallout, Bastion or Alien Shooter. Isometrical with the sprite objects. But all this will be available in a High Defenition.

When your game will be released?

When it will be done =) But not later then 1st of March 2013. We hope Zombie_Forward will be available to play in 5-6 months.